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Fpuscholarworks FPUScholarWorks The long weekend or the short week: Mennonite peace theology, 1925-1944. Author(s): Paul Toews. Source: Mennonite Quarterly Review 60 (1986): 38-57. Published by: Mennonite Quarterly Review. Stable URL: http://hdl.handle.net/11418/584 FPUScholarWorks is an online repository for creative and scholarly works and other resources created by members of the Fresno Pacific University community. FPUScholarWorks makes these resources freely available on the Web and assures their preservation for the future. THE LONG WEEKEND OR THE SHORT WEEK: MENNONITE PEACE THEOLOGY, 1925-1944 PAUL TOEWS* I Twentieth-century Mennonites inherited a long tradition of reflection on their relationship to national societies. Ever since the sixteenth century, Men­ nonites have worked at fashioning a theology for understanding the ap­ propriate relationship between the people of God and the people of the world. The theology that emerged sharply distinguished between the obligations of citizenship and those of the Kingdom. The people of God, when they were true to their calling, lived by a different ethic than did the peoples of a national culture. This ethical dualism, while forged out of a hermeneutical tradition, was also nourished by a cultural dualism. Mennonites living on the fringes of various host societies could easily think of the requirements of faith as being inimical to participation in the social system. The social isolation of the Men- nonite withdrawal that emerged in Europe, and in America following the Revolutionary War, pulled apart the realms of the believers and nonbelievers. The state lived in its realm and acted appropriate to its calling, and the church, or at least the true church (which on issues of war and violence con­ sisted of the few historic peace churches), occupied its own realm. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Mennonites' understanding about their relationship to the larger society was reasonably secure. The posi­ tions they had worked out between themselves and various host societies of­ fered promise of continual economic and political progress within the confines of the nonresistant tradition. The Russian Mennonites lived in what they came to term the Golden Era. American Mennonites were also expectant. America had a proven record of tolerating the peaceable conscience. The memories of the Revolutionary War and Civil War—if not the social isolation coming out of those wars—had dimmed. A sense of confidence and sureness marked any expressions of Mennonites in the pre-World War I era.1 Men- nonite communities and conferences were not obliged to spend much time in articulating their peace theology or in formally transmitting the understanding to their children. It was part of the cultural and theological inheritance and, as such, was something unconsciously embedded in their self-understanding.2 *Paul Toews is Professor of History at Fresno Pacific College, Fresno, California. 1 See James C. Juhnke, A People of Two Kingdoms: The Political Acculturation of the Kansas Men­ nonites (Newton, Kan.: Faith and Life Press, 1975), chapter 6. 2 The absence of Mennonite publishing on their peace theology in the thirty-five years (1880-1915) preceding World War I is noticeable. Harold S. Bender, in Two Centuries of American 38 MENNONITE PEACE THEOLOGY 39 The dialogue about Mennonite peace theology in the 1920s and 30s was far from serene. "The Long Weekend* ' conjures up one of two images: it refers either to the rest between the two outbursts of military action or to the playful and culturally unbounded ambience of the interwar years. The period was hardly playful for Mennonites. It was a contentious time. There were divergent viewpoints and sharply contested positions. It was full of anxiety. The tempo of discourse changed. At the center of these controversies was the need to redefine the meaning of the Mennonite peace witness. The urgency of this issue was recognized by the two largest conferences—the Mennonite General Conference (MC) and the General Conference Mennonites (GC)— with the reorganization of the Peace Problems Committee for the MC s in 1925 and the creation of the GC Peace Committee in 1926. What had changed? It is of course easy to point to World War I. And surely the war was one of the fundamental catalysts for the discussion. Yet there was more. At least three realities now impinged on the American Mennonite peace discus­ sion. Collectively they required a rethinking of the peace theology of the church. The process of reconceptualizing, while begun during the 1920s and 30s, certainly was not completed before the coming of World War II. Yet the discussion does offer some insight into the changes that reshaped how American Mennonites understood the meaning of their most distinctive theological position.3 Mennonite Literature, 1727-1928 (Goshen, Ind.: Mennonite Historical Society, 1929), notes only the following books specifically dealing with peace issues: Daniel Musser, Non-resistance Asserted: As Taught by "Christ and His Apostles" (1886); John Holdeman, A Treatise on Magistracy and War. (1891); J. K. Zook, War, Its Evils and Blessings (1895); J. G. Ewert, Die Christliche Lehre von der Wehrlosigkeit (1899); and Der Waffen-lose Waechter, published periodically, 1871-1889, by Samuel Ernst. The bibliography in Arnos B. Hoover's The Jonas Martin Era (Denver, Pa.: By the Author, 1982) reflects the paucity of such published works among the Old Orders as well. 3 The discussion of the peace theology and activity of these two decades has a rich historiographical tradition. Melvin Gingerich, in Service for Peace: A History of Mennonite Civilian Public Service (Akron, Pa.: Mennonite Central Committee, 1949), and Guy F. Hershberger, in The Mennonite Church in the Second World Wzr(Scottdale, Pa.: Mennonite Publishing House, 1951), both detail much of the inter-Mennonite and Mennonite Church activity in the interwar period. James C. Juhnke in A People of Two Kingdoms provides valuable interpretation on Kansas Men­ nonites. Albert Keim, in "Service or Resistance? The Mennonite Response to Conscription in World War II," MQR> LII (1978), 141-55, traces the discussion and negotiations leading toward the establishment of Civilian Public Service. Guy F. Hershberger in two unpublished manuscripts—"Questions Raised Concerning the Work of the Committee on Peace and Social Concerns (of the Mennonite Church) and Its Predecessors'' and "The Committee on Peace and Social Concerns (of the Mennonite Church) and Its Predecessors," Guy F. Hershberger Collec­ tion, Archives of the Mennonite Church, Goshen, Indiana—traces the history of the Peace Prob­ lems Committee, as it was called in the 1920s and 30s. Rodney J. Sawatsky, in "The Influences of Fundamentalism on Mennonite Nonresistance, 1908-1944" (M.A. thesis, University of Min­ nesota, 1973) and "History and Ideology: American Mennonite Identity Definition Through History" (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1977), provides essential categories for understanding the differing positions in the peace dialogue. I am particularly indebted to this last work. 40 THE MENNONITE QUARTERLY REVIEW World War I was the first reality that shaped the discussion. It came unex­ pectedly to Mennonites, and it came with a ferocity that could not have been foreseen. This war, like no previous one, challenged the historic commitments of American democracy to the political and religious freedom of its citizens. The war was one of the most dismal episodes in the history of American civil liberties. This, after all, was a global crusade—the war to end all wars and make the world safe for democracy. As such, it required the unwavering sup­ port of all peoples. The dissenting minorities could not stand in the way of the new reign of peace and justice that this terrible scourge of war would bring. Mennonites felt the wrath of a state bent on conformity, but so did many other dissenting peoples. Conscientious objectors were treated more harshly in this country than in Great Britain, France and Germany. Court-martial sentences were extreme. Seventeen COs were sentenced to death, 142 to life imprison­ ment and an additional 64 to prison terms of more than 25 years. The sentences imposed for conscientious objection were far more severe than those given for graft and wartime profiteering.4 The intolerance of World War I intruded into the postwar period. For the conscientious objectors the end of the war came only in 1933 when the last CO was pardoned.5 The indignities, abuses and physical cruelty were remembered in Mennonite homes and churches during the 1920s and 30s. Mennonite historians interpreting the war suggested that it had permanently altered the relationship between the nonresistant peoples and the militaristic state of the twentieth century. C. Henry Smith was persuaded that the future would be more difficult than the past. Governments would be less willing to make special concessions for distinctive minorities. He fully understood that democratic societies were frequently less able to accommodate special interests than autocratic rulers were. Furthermore, the American state, as particularly evidenced by the wartime experience, was not far behind the totalitarian states in making the state the supreme object of loyalty and worship. He assumed that in the next war it would be more difficult to challenge universal conscrip­ tion than it had been in the past one.6 In 1935 Guy Hershberger likened the situation facing the American Mennonites to what the European Mennonites confronted in the nineteenth century with the growing militarization of their societies and the withdrawal of any exemption for reasons of conscience. The U.S. government could easily be tempted with the same. Hershberger was fearful because "the history of the Mennonite church seems to teach that when 4 Mulford Sibley and Philip Jacob, Conscription of Conscience: The American State and the Conscien­ tious Objector, 1940-1947 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1952), 14. Notes in the E.
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